


It Gets Easier In The Telling

by xyliane



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Confessions, Fluff, Gen, Growing Up, M/M, Sibling Bonding, Tumblr Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 06:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11248611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xyliane/pseuds/xyliane
Summary: “Tell us how you feel!” Killua’s sisters demand. And it’s hard to respond, at first. But it gets easier eventually.





	It Gets Easier In The Telling

“Tell me!” Alluka demands.

“Tell you what?” 

She scowls up at him, blue eyes flashing with annoyance. “Tell me what you’re feeling!”

Killua ruffles his sister’s hair with a grin. It sticks up in odd directions, beads she’s woven in the strands next to her cheeks preventing it from becoming a total mess. "But you already know!"

His sister sticks her tongue out at him. "I want to hear!"

Killua laughs and messes her hair up even more. “I love you,” he says.

Alluka wriggles out from under his noogie, only to boop him in the nose. “Love you,” she says back.

—

It’s easy, telling his sisters how much he cares about them. Which is kind of strange, all things considered: Killua, if given the chance, hates talking about his feelings. He knows this, his friends know this, hell, Hisoka probably knows this. Feelings are gross, but worse, they’re vulnerabilities. They’re places where someone can stick in a knife and twist, popping him open and plucking out the bits he’d rather be kept tucked safely inside.

Gon’s never been closed off with his affections, readily admitting his feelings to friends and family and even people he plans on punching in the face. Especially the people he’s about to punch, because when Gon feels, it spills over like a cup of water he’s running nen through, flooding everything and everyone around him. Killua almost misses that feeling of being swept away on his best friend’s emotions, except it made him open the floodgates of his own. And that is the opposite of what he wants. It’s too terrifying, especially now that they’re apart and if it’s let out, there’s nothing he can do but drown in it, confused and uncertain and lost. 

But with Alluka and Nanika? Killua refuses to stop reminding them again and again how much he loves them. Maybe it’s because they didn’t hear enough of it before, when they were kids and Killua didn’t know he’d forget the most important people in his life for long enough for someone else to nestle his way into Killua’s heart. Maybe it's because he needs to remind himself that they've all changed in so many ways, but this will never be one of them.

“Tell me, Brother!”

“Killua, tell!”

“I love you.”

But mostly, it’s because they ask. And Killua’s never been very good at telling his sisters no.

—

Sometimes, Alluka will ask Killua every day for a week, to tell her and Nanika that he loves them. Sometimes, she’ll not bring it up for a month or three. But she never has to specify what it is she wants to be told, because Killua always knows what she means. Just like when she eyes an ice cream shop with an innocent smile on her face, hands laced together behind her back and boots kicking at the dust in front of the threshold. (That means either Killua has to buy both of them ice cream, or some hapless boy is going to try to impress his sister by giving her the biggest ice cream cone anyone has ever seen. Killua usually buys some, because he wants ice cream, too, dammit.) Alluka’s not hard to read, really. Not to Killua.

Nanika is a little harder. She’s shy, content to let Alluka trick boys into buying them ice cream or absorb books in the gift shops in every town they go through. But Killua knows, when Alluka spaces out a little, Nanika’s asking something in the wordless way she does, and he does his best to give her what she wants. Alluka has to adjust things a little, sometimes, when he doesn’t quite hit the mark. And it hurts a little, but Alluka doesn’t say anything, and Nanika doesn’t change, so Killua just resolves to do better next time.

It’s an unspoken relief, that there will always be a next time. However much he’s screwed up, his sisters still love him. And they want to make sure that he does, so they ask.

So he tells them.

—

“Don’t you want to tell me what you’re feeling?” he asks them, perched over a pool waiting for the geyser to erupt. It’s been several months that they’ve been traveling, enough that it’s comfortable to ask questions like this.

Alluka smiles. “We already do, Brother,” she says. “And you always listen.”

“I’d be a terrible big brother if I didn’t,” he says, nudging her feet with his own.

She kicks back, booted feet firm. “Then I’d be a terrible sister if I didn’t ask, too! You’re not very good at admitting when you’re sad.”

He huffs and briefly debates flicking her cookies into the pool. He decides against it in favor of stuffing a handful of them into his mouth. “I’m not sad!” he says, crumbs spilling out over the edge of the water.

“Not now. But sometimes…” She delicately selects one of the last unbroken desserts and nibbles on it. “Sometimes, I need to make sure. It’s okay to feel sad, I think. Or happy. Or just to feel, even if you don’t know what it is. It’s okay for you to tell me.”

The ground beneath them rumbles, and a little group of tourists on the other side of the pool shrieks in anticipation. “You’re pretty smart, you know,” Killua says.

She smiles widely, grin sparkling as the geyser erupts, turning the whole world into misty rainbows and watery gemstones. “I know that. But Brother, tell me for real!” she says.

“I love you,” he admits, and laughs when the geyser’s water splashes onto both of them, soaking everything and carrying away the remnants of their lunch.

—

Alluka and Nanika never ask about Gon.

No, that’s not right. Killua’s sisters are constantly asking for stories, for tales of Killua’s best friend, the jokes he played and the battles he won and the animals he found and the island he loved. Killua has no problem talking about that, because Gon is was will be always on his mind, tucked into his own little corner. And the stories make it obvious who his friend is, the emotions he wore on his sleeve and the ridiculous way he went at life. They ask about Killua’s other friends, too, but Killua knows Gon best, so it’s easiest to talk about him.

But they don’t ask how he feels about Gon. They leave Gon in the things he did, not in what Killua felt about it. And for the most part, Killua is thankful. He’s not entirely sure what he felt. The emotions are all jumbled up together, slowly unraveling as the months go by and the wounds get softer to the touch. He knows he felt—feels something, and it’s rolled up in and around the memory of his friend, in the buzz of a new message coming in from Whale Island, in the sight of his grin coming in grainy from a terrible camera.

Maybe they don’t ask, because they already know, having untangled the mess Killua’s made of his own emotions. And Killua’s not really sure how he feels about that.

—

Killua loves his sisters. Really, deeply, truly, even when they are asking ridiculous questions or finding new ways to work schooling and education into their travels. To the point that he doesn’t even think about it when one or both of them demand, “Tell me, tell me!” It becomes reflex to remind them what he feels. He doesn’t know why they want to hear it all the damn time, but if it makes them happy, it makes Killua happy.

It’s kind of embarrassing when they ask in public, when Alluka demands, “Tell me!” in the middle of a crowded carnival, or when Nanika quietly chirps, “Killua, tell me!” right before the start of a fireworks show. He doesn’t not immediately respond, of course, he’s a better big brother than that. But then the shopkeepers give him these looks, those stupid sappy what a good brother expressions that drip off their faces and land on the floor. Worse is how it makes his insides squirm, embarrassed and proud all at once. Especially when his sisters beam up at him, giddy and gleeful.

He doesn’t want them to stop asking. And slowly, it becomes easier to admit to other things, too. To tell them when he’s tired, to admit he’d rather not stay in an aquarium for too long, to protest when they push a little too hard on scars that haven't entirely healed. To get them to talk to him more about _their_ feelings, too. To realize he misses the people he met on Gon’s journey, that he really misses his best friend the most. His sisters listen, patiently, ready and waiting if he wants to talk, and more than happy to fill the silence when he doesn’t.

It’s nice, in a way. Knowing someone wants to know what he’s feeling. That they’re willing to ask, and that they're willing to listen.

Even if they do so all the damn time, until it’s a reflex, an instant response:

“Tell us!” they demand.

“I love you,” he says.

It should be annoying, telling the truth about his feelings all the time, even to the most important people in his life. But it’s not. And after a while, it almost becomes easy as breathing.

—

Gon finds them outside the market, where there are people milling everywhere and Killua does not give a single shit that someone is yelling when Gon tries to throw himself into Killua’s arms and only succeeds in knocking them both down the grassy hillside, landing in a tangle of limbs and grins at the bottom. They’re laughing, Killua at how Gon’s vest is blisteringly orange and Gon probably at how twigs and grass tangle in Killua’s too-long curls, both of them at how solid they feel against each other. Alluka is shouting something from the top of the slope, but it’s hard to make out over the sound of Gon's laughter.

Gon picks himself up, half-sitting so Killua can sit up on his hands and grin so hard it hurts almost as much as the pounding in his chest. It’s been weeks since Killua’s last visit to Whale Island, months since Gon’s last trip off-island, years since they’ve traveled together. Killua’s emotions are still jumbled up, bouncing around in his stomach like a bag full of ping pong balls dropped onto a counter, but it doesn’t feel so bad anymore.

“What are you doing here?” Killua asks.

His best friend’s eyes sparkle, grin full of afternoon sunlight close and warm and full of life in the way only Gon can be. “I missed you,” he says, as though that’s the only reasonable explanation, to admit his feelings as honest and blunt as a straight punch.

Killua snorts. “You always say that.”

“Because it’s always true!” Gon’s smile softens a little, something warm and deep that buries itself into Killua’s skin. “What about you, Killua? Tell me!”

And by reflex, before he knows the words spilling out of his heart in a flood, Killua says, “I love you.”

It takes a moment to realize what he’s said. But as his cheeks begin burning, blaming his sisters and embarrassed enough at himself to burst into flames, Gon’s eyes widen in a delighted grin, and Killua wonders if maybe it is okay to admit what he’s feeling. 

If only just this once.

**Author's Note:**

> alluka and nanika share a mutual goal of getting their big brother to stop keeping his feelings bottled up and to talk about them every once in a while. it's a slow-going process.
> 
> since "all roads" is still under edit after a long weekend got longer than expected, I'm uploading this [tumblr ficlet](https://xyliane.tumblr.com/post/161528675513/it-gets-easier-in-the-telling) from a few weeks ago. please accept this fluff in apology.


End file.
